Ibrahim Ali Hassan

Assistant Foreign Minister for African Affairs, Egypt

The Assistant Foreign Minister for African Affairs is a fixture at the major Asian development events, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development. The long-serving diplomat has seen first-hand the rise of Asia in Africa and has led Egypt's delegations to TICAD in 1998 and to FOCAC since its first conference in 2000. Now Ibrahim Ali Hassan will head and coordinate the fourth ministerial conference of FOCAC in Sharm El Sheikh in late 2009.

Egypt relishes its role as the regional vanguard of development and Hassan has worked hard to maintain its status. He is on the steering committee of the New African Partnership for Development, of which Egypt is one of the five founding members, and represented his country at the African Peer Review Mechanism summit in Benin in October 2008. China and Egypt are old allies: Egypt was the first African country to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic in 1956. Preparations for this year's FOCAC have already shown a taste for triumphalist talk about their respective ancient civilizations and their more recent economic successes.

Where other donors have tightened their belts, China will seek to top its performance at the 2006 Beijing FOCAC. China's economy has contracted alarmingly since last autumn, but envoys insist that aid will not be cut. This year's agenda will focus on food security and infrastructure development. To further warm bilateral ties, China's Vice-Premier Li Keqiang led a trade delegation to Cairo on 24-27 December to discuss increasing Chinese investment in Egypt.